The six poems I settled on for a detailed response all possessed ingenuity, a good sense of structure, and a developed use of syntax. Some of the syntactical turns were so memorable and smartly executed that I was keen to offer some radical feedback, feedback that I hope will be useful to everyone who submitted their work. It is only partial but I hope it'll serve to spark these poems into their next drafts. I only wish I could see where they go! Well done all.

Hold, by Ivy Alvarez

I have a sorrowing the size of a lump of coal.One day I will tender it. I mean tinder it.I mean light it up in my hands, holding oneven as it burns me. My palms will blister,water, bleed, heal, scar over. I will take anotherlump and light it again. Eventually, palmswill be foot soles that have journeyed acrossthe backs of river rocks. For now, let me learnto hold on to something. I mean sorrowing.My sorrowings. Your sorrowings.

This is a nicely compacted single stanza poem. The tight form itself is like a compressed coal, making form and content brilliantly confluent. It also has a lovely movement of sound, the trajectory of which takes us to what I sense is the poem's point of inevitability, the image of "foot soles that have journeyed across/the backs of river rocks"; as if the poem had been leading up to this. It may even be worth starting the poem with this image. Doing so will either create another poem altogether, or take this one further. When we stay with a sound-pattern, further meanings arise that may at first seem contrary to the ideas with which we started out. And that's all part of listening to what the poem wants to be. I'm reminded of Machado's poem, "For if the live coal of love so much as smoulder…", in Other Songs for Guiomar (Poem 55, trans. Alan Trueblood), and Don Paterson's version of it in The Eyes.

Summer Sunday on the River at Brandenburg by Peter Davies

The town's deserted, but the water glowsWith sun and skin and boats conveying wrinkles,Lines, folds, stretchmarks, every body showsIts age and history, and every body sparkles.

Women in their sixties and their underwearEngaged in raucous contest with a knotOf pale and gleaming boys, who could not bearTo lose on any other day, but what

A festival of flesh this is that slipsIts moorings, casts off pride, and sets desireTo the breeze! Serene amongst the throng,

An old man furled in thick white hair, who tipsHis hat—his one concession—a silver satyrNaked as the day is long, and this day is long…

… And so is a river – which is key image that functions to magnetise the poem's different filings together. I get the impression that the water is a bigger theme here than we might at first think – it brings everyone together and in so doing makes for a good lively sonnet with plenty of movement. The volta is excellently placed, turning the poem's focus from breadth to depth after the octet. To maximise on this it may be an idea to cut lines 9-10 and give the sestet over entirely to the old man. A sonnet traditionally is a structure capable of holding oppositions that, although irreconcilable, find their solution in the poem simply through an act of imagination. The contrast integral to this poem's effectiveness is perfect for that. Just a semicolon needed after "stretch marks". I was reminded of the vividness, and ubiquitous presence of water, in Salvatore Quasimodo's poems.

How to Skin a Swan by Rebecca Morgan Frank

First, defeather, one by one, removingflight. Deconstruct the illusion of white,note the muddied feathers, the mites.The buried ebony quills plucked fromthe pink and bubbled skin. Then, drainslowly from the heart. There mustn't bea drop left to stain or moisten. Slicecarefully down the center, split cleanthe floating body. The throat will bedifficult–the ghost-like trumpetingecho means the skin may be tougherthan its delicacy implies. Die it dark,tailor it well. When you see beauty,you must want to remove it.

A swan sonnet. A dead swan sonnet, which is perhaps even more suited to the sonnet form. A bird in the process of being un-formed, or re-formed. The strange effect of this poem is that I noticed myself almost recreating the swan in reverse procedure, perhaps because the last line is so contrary to normal human instinct. By a process of deconstruction, the actual swan becomes more vivid – a nice paradox for a sonnet, one which tends toward the Shakespearean rather than any other, owing to its conclusive last lines. Perhaps, then, "Die it dark" (dye?) would work better shifted onto the next line to get a traditional "clinching couplet"! Save the skin though. Coleridge wouldn't have liked to see that thrown out.

Village by Sarah Sloat

My skin is building a village,a fine-grained, homespun village,the spitting image of holy ghostlyin tallow-ivory white.Down slides the hillside, housescrowding the hem of the arcade.I drop in and dust plummets;awnings dissolve in robes and sleeves.Here it hoards with mites in cornersand erects a golden rookery.Here it trashes its last scaffold.How unclean I'd be, unkempt.I'd be pinprick and smoulderIf my skin weren't interestedin institutions, if it didn'tinstall this little sill for meto collect my allotted ounceof moonlight. Here's an eaveto arrange the mosaic and geneticmessages skin was given to understand,the reaping, sowing and dismantlingall getting so gorgeouslyout of hand.

In order to make a clear sweep towards these last great lines, and they way they fall towards silence – the poem framed brilliantly by white space – I'd be inclined to tighten up this poem: it could feasibly start with "Down slides the hillside" (but the awkward proximity of the rhyme between "slide" and "side" needs adjusting), and after "scaffold", a stanza break could be introduced. The second stanza would start with "How unclean I'd be, unkempt". It may be more effective if the stanzas were of the same length. The first line is crucial – so perhaps it could be the title of the poem, and may be more catching. This poem has so much dimension to it I'd even suggest evolving it into four-line stanzas, in the manner of many of Anna Akhmatova's beautiful poems.

Cicatrix by Richard W Strachan

Out walking in the dew-bedazzled grassby rampart walls and Antonine earth-works,you reach out for the handhold on the stileand peel back your sleeve, expose your scar.

The wall is a yielded wound in rucked, reflecting earth.This scar, clamped against your arm, is eloquentof distant disagreements with yourself.It gleams pale and paper-thin, a raised bisectingridge between two clean, unsullied fields. It has eternityto speak, a signifier in the skin,this self-dissent, healed argument.

Rolling down the cotton to your wristwhen you sense my eyes against it,the light's soft water catches at the silverof its shine; reflection of the blade's sharp mirror.Future lovers will have no answer to its purpose.

I'll suggest something radical here: cut the first and last stanzas. They have a less developed, and very different, register than the middle section – which is a poem in itself; the point at which I sense that, in Ted Hughes's words, "all the words are hearing each other clearly, and every stress is feeling every other stress". All the circumstantial information we need is in the middle section, where it is "shown and not told". The poem's impact will then be greater for its economy of language, its cohesion, which is a form of eloquence. And greater also for ending with such sophisticated rhymes and the smart syntactical effect of "a signifier in the skin,/this self-dissent, healed argument". I'd recommend placing "It has eternity" on the next line and using the title as an opportunity to locate the poem. The title can be used to provide any further information, or, as seems fitting to the rural context of the poem, a place name or landmark.

My Skin by Rob Wright

My skin renews itself. Old layers sloughAway in showers, soap and steam. My faceRemains the same face, nonetheless — enoughAlike at least for me to see the placeWhere it was cut when I was ten. It's strangeHow chains of cells remember what they are;How all the molecules are so arrangedThat they emerge unblemished or as scars.What is this memory? Where is it stored?There's some Platonic template of my skin,A mask that I'm condemned to wear. If boredAt looking at the features I live in,I know that time will pull them to the boneIn small degrees, like lichens rimed on stone.

The end rhymes of this sonnet set up a particular pace and timing whereby all the lines seem pulled towards the bone, the crux, of the last two lines, which feel like a perfect ending. Timing is everything in a poem, and language the means by which time is re-structured to be confluent with poetic meaning. In a unique way this poem is a rondo, it comes round to itself; it ends where it begun – back with the personal – in a fascinating arc that passes through speculative enquiry, which is, again, a familiar realm for the sonnet form. How fitting for a poem about renewal to take this shape. I would suggest some tinkering with the end rhymes of the first four lines, only because they force a couple of awkward line breaks. The effect of this is that the wonderful harmonic timing of the rest of the poem doesn't properly come into play until line five. The title may also need to be doing more work for the poem.